Accidents Will Happen
By Rurouni Star

Summary: Ed nods off. Disturbing ideas occur at the end of the day.

Chapter 11:

Ed said absolutely nothing for the rest of the day. Mustang had once thought a silent Ed was impossible. Being proven wrong was highly unnerving, and the way it set his teeth on edge reminded him of that week he'd been forced to go without coffee.

At six pm, by the time he finished up for the day, he half-considered turning something into a goat again, just to make things seem more like the usual.

This abnormal behavior was partly explained when he realized that Ed had fallen asleep out of boredom – his arm was swinging here and there, and his mouth hung open in a way that made for quiet snoring. It was a position such that any other day, there would have been pictures taken for future blackmail.

Hm.

Roy narrowed his eyes, feeling that something was out of place with the picture.

He looked around once before rising from the desk and moving closer, analyzing Ed's face for peculiarities. Perhaps his enemy-dressed-like-Ed theory had been right – er, no. He wasn't that crazy.

There didn't seem to be anything out of place, other than the big dramatic bandage Havoc had wrapped around his head. That was probably some form of passive-aggressive revenge, meant to jab at his conscience. The joke was on them – he didn't have one.

Roy rubbed at his forehead – then blinked, his gaze drawn downward.

Of the arm that hung from the couch, only the bare fingertips of a gloved hand could be seen. The rest was entirely covered by Ed's red sleeve.

That didn't seem right.

Curiously, Roy looked over at the other arm, presumably the metal one (though he never could remember which was which from which point of view). The sleeve stopped just below the wrist.

What?

Mustang shook his head and straightened, deciding that he had started to hallucinate. Ed's arms were exactly the same length. Winry Rockbell always made certain of that. Besides which, if he had his arms right, there was no possible way that the metal arm should be longer than the normal one.

Ed had apparently noticed his movement at some level, because his eyes were starting to open. Roy almost kicked him the rest of the way awake, just to show he wasn't going soft – except that he could see Hawkeye and her unhappy gun in his mind's eye. Reluctantly, he waited for Ed to waken fully on his own.

"Ow. Damn, it's bright in here."

He raised an eyebrow as Ed squinted at him.

"Are you Fury or Mustang? I can't tell."

"Colonel Mustang," Roy corrected in a grumble, feeling ineffectual and slightly guilty. Oh, well… damn. He'd located his non-existent conscience.

"Yeah, yeah," Ed yawned. "What's up?"

Roy had been about to say 'it's time to go home, get out of my office', but he checked himself just in time. Hawkeye… couldn't possible have meant two days. With the… night thing, in between…

"…nothing. I'm going to get more paperwork." Dear god. He mentally upgraded his two-day diagnosis to 'transfiguring the grass to pavement and leaping out the third story window'.

"Where's my spaghetti?" Ed muttered.

"Break room," Roy said shortly. "And I am not carrying you this time. I have my limits."

Ed tilted his head back to look up at him with a funny expression. "I don't remember that," he said.

Roy inwardly winced. That had been one of those things he'd been planning to keep from Ed (in that blackmail-the-staff-with-a-noonday-roast way), knowing it would be held over his head for decades. "You were quite close to unconscious at the time," he said. Then, pride wounded – "You weigh much more than one would expect from a two inch person."

Mustang counted down the seconds with an almost desperate anticipation. 3. 2. 1-

"Hope it wasn't too bad," Ed shrugged, rubbing at his forehead. "Metal arm and all."

Roy was going to need therapy.